The paper chaste

Carlo Esqueda, the Dane County Clerk of Courts, sits next to one of the scanners that will allow the county's courts to shift to a paperless system next month.

Normally around this time of year, Dane County Clerk of Circuit Court Carlo Esqueda would put in a big order for manila folders and other repositories of paper records. This year, he says enthusiastically, “We didn’t order those! So it’s sink or swim.”

Beginning Jan. 4, Esqueda’s office is undergoing a bold transformation, from a place where nearly all records are filed and kept on paper to one where all records must be filed electronically or scanned in on receipt.

“We’re in it all the way,” Esqueda says. “We’re just going to be very forward-looking and embrace the new technology.”

At present, Dane County only keeps probate court records electronically. Esqueda says this began two years ago, as a test, and the new system has worked well. A few counties, including Jefferson, Dodge and La Crosse, have already gone electronic for newly filed records.

At the Dodge County courthouse in Juneau, visitors view electronically filed records at terminals, obtaining printed copies at the usual statutory rate of $1.25 per page. Esqueda intends to do the same using his office’s existing public terminals.

Other counties are phasing in the use of electronic records gradually. In Brown County, which includes Green Bay, document scanning is occurring on paternity, small claims and traffic cases, and there are plans to allow e-filing sometime in 2016, says John Vander Leest, the county court clerk.

While electronic files can be made accessible through any computer, the court system has been cool to this idea. Court records, especially in criminal and family cases, often contain painfully personal information, and it is felt that the need to make a trip to the courthouse offers some privacy protection. It also protects the ability of clerks to charge $1.25 per page.

The Director of State Courts Office, which oversees clerks of court throughout the state, is offering tools to counties to facilitate e-filing in civil, family and small claims cases. Dane County will use the tools in these categories, while scanning in records for other kinds of cases.

The county, using the $20,000 it saved from not buying a year’s worth of folders to fill up with paper records, has bought about 55 desktop scanners at $300 a pop, Esqueda says. Several dozen more will be provided by the state, which has already furnished Dane County with three bulk scanners at about $5,000 each, for heavy-duty use. Dane is looking to buy five more.

While Dane County’s action puts it ahead of others, it comes amid growing pressure. A rule petition now pending before the state Supreme Court would require “a county-by-county transition from paper case files in the circuit courts to all-electronic files,” including a mandate that attorneys and high-volume small claims court users submit records electronically.

Esqueda, in his role as president of the Wisconsin Clerks of Circuit Court Association, testified in favor of the Supreme Court rule petition.

“I think Carlo sees the writing on the wall,” says John Barrett, clerk of circuit court for Milwaukee County. “E-filing is going to be mandatory.” Milwaukee is currently scanning in whole categories of filed documents, including criminal complaints and judgments, and receiving other filings in electronic form, as will Dane County.

Barrett notes that going electronic is “a culture shock” for some judges and others who still crave records in paper form. “I don’t think you will ever have a paperless court system,” he says. “I prefer to refer to it as paper on demand.” He believes electronic records are better for everyone involved. “You don’t have lost documents. The file itself will be chronologically in order every time you look at it.”

Once a record is scanned in electronically, the paper version can be destroyed. But aren’t electronic records vulnerable to technical failures and deliberate attacks? Says Esqueda, “We’ve been assured that, through redundancies and firewalls, our records are secure.”

There are no plans to convert the millions of pages of paper records in closed cases, although scanning may be done on a piecemeal basis for files requested from storage. Currently, Dane County pays about $40,000 a year to store paper records at a remote location. Given state court rules that require some records to be retained for 75 years, a full transition away from paper will take decades.

“As documents age out under the retention schedules, they will be moved out, and nothing else will move in,” says Esqueda. “It’s going to be more of a generational change.”